The Local Watering Hole
by bisexualcharliedavis
Summary: Charlie takes Mattie to see some of the sights of his home planet. (Star Wars AU)


"Nar Shadaa." Charlie said, as Mattie followed him off the ship and on to the grey planet's surface.

"I agree, that's where we are." Mattie said, as she trailed after him, listening to the crying though the force. It was uncomfortable for her to be in such close range to such suffering, so much so she could almost feel it. Charlie seemed mostly unconcerned by it.  
"The Smugglers Moon." He continued, in his usual spiel sort of a way as they crossed the end of the docking bay where they were leaving the Hawk for the time being. "More people here then there is on Nal Hutta probably."

"What's on Nal Hutta?"She asked, as they made their way past what appeared to be a huge pit prtected by flimsy barriers  
"Hutts." Charlie said, after a moment. "If we landed there, then not only would we be washing the stink out of our clothes for the next ten years, but I'd probably have to sell you to them so we could get a pass and leave."  
"Why me?"  
"They're Hutts, Mattie. They like pretty girls and credits."

"Ah. So you think I'm pretty?" Charlie seemed to realize he'd just paid her a compliment and turned back to look at her for a moment, and then rolling his eyes.  
"Mattie I've spend the last twenty odd years hauling freight from one side of the outer rim to the other, with only Lawson for company. Every girl is pretty to me." Mattie can't hold back a little laugh as they passed a vendor selling droid parts. She's been distracted momentarily from the suffering of the planet, but with Charlie no longer offering commentary, she is unable to distract herself.

"You've never been to a place like Nar Shadaa before have you?" He asked, after a moment.

"No, I've spent most of the last twenty years hunting down Jedi Holocrons, and the Jedi didn't frequent back water little moons like this." Charlie makes a small scoffing noise, and just when she thought he was about to go into another rant about how Jedi were hypocrites, he didn't. He simply replied with

"No, the suffering of a few thousand refugees doesn't really perk the Jedi's radar does it." It wasn't a question, it was a statement. She follows after him somberly, before trying to spark up conversation again.

"Why are we here?" She questioned, jogging slightly so that she was standing next to him. She figured it had to be a good reason for Charlie to take them off course and land them on a planet where Jedi were so hated that she traded in her shiny new lightsaber for her regular vibroblade.

"Because I need to stop off home, why else?" He questioned. Mattie scoffed lightly at him .

"What that's all? You wanted to go home so you took us of course and drove us here?"  
"Yep." Charlie replied, "I figured now would be a great time to show you the sights, local watering holes." He doesn't finish his sentence

"You wanted to take me on a date?"  
"Hmm, maybe. I also think that you're incredibly sheltered." He offers. Mattie scoffs at him.  
"What?" She just shook her head at him as they walked over the grey walkways.

…

Charlie and Lawson's apartment block is nothing like she imagined it to be. Well, nothing about Nar Shadaaa as how she was how she expected it to be, but this felt like a low blow to the stomach. The building was as derelict and dirty looking as it's neighbours. Years of spacers and smugglers taking up refuge in it's walls rendering it ugly and uncared for by those who had not lived there. Mattie herself had grown up on Corasunt, the planet, while similarly built up like Nar Shadaa, was different in the way that, at least, the part she came from, was glamorous and constantly being reimagined to keep the huge sky scrapers and towering buildings looking nice for the galactic councils and other important people that took up on it surface.

She'd spent most of the young life she could remember at the tops of the tallest buildings, eating in the finest places and exploring the carpeted hallways of her home.

Charlie, for his part, offered her his hand to help her into the rickety turbo lift that was probably as old as they were.

"Is all of Nar Shadaa like this?" She asked, softly, as they hurtled towards the ninth floor of the building. Charlie shook his head.

"No, the tops of the tallest buildings towards the center have casinos and fine dining." He offers, "Rich people looking to get away from tax can occasionally come here to make a life for themselves, Hutts aren't exactly known for being humble so the ones that have taken up on this moon enjoy a fine lifestyle while the rest of us toil and struggle." He explained, as they stepped out into a long corridor of doors. She supposes that perhaps Nar Shadaa is not as different to her home as she originally thought. Courusant's surface, the actual surface, with roads and walkways was run down as well. Vendors hawked what they could to make what they could to live how they could. A cycle of poverty that provided the rich with cheap goods and even cheaper labor.

Mattie trailed after him, but Charlie seemed to be at home as they passed door after door. He eventually comes to stop at one that was as seemingly non-descript and plain as all the others, and a pass card produced from his pocket, opens it. He went inside, and paused to breathe in the smell.

"This is your home?"  
"No, I've just walked you into a strangers apartment." He said, with a roll of his eyes. Mattie sighed softly, and sat at one of the beds in the tiny room. Charlie went about typing on a station located in the corner of the room. Mattie took a moment to consider her company.

Charlie bore all the markings of a man who spent most of his life in space. He was pale, ghostly white even, from spending such a deal of time in the vacuum of space, away from any sun that would have given his skin any colouring While used to the chill of space, he burned easily and often if he was no careful on a desert planet. He had pale eyes, a sure sign of someone who's ancestors were part of the initial group of spacers, pared with his tall frame. Despite his apparent heritage, Charlie was exceedingly well groomed for a smuggler. Most of the ones she'd come into contact with on her hunt for Jedi holocrons had been dirty and unkempt. She understood this to be some kind of transportable disguise, if they were clean they would be unrecognizable. It was smart. Disgusting, but smart.

Despite occasionally being described as Lawson's son, Mattie could see this was not the case. Unlike Lawson, who possessed high cheekbones (A sure sign that his ancestry came from a rich background) Charlie had rounded cheeks that despite being just over thirty standard years, still possessed a small amount of baby fat. It gave him a slightly chubby cheeked look when he was pouting. On the few occasions she caught him smiling, his very noticeable nasolabial crease, that was slightly deeper on the left side of his face then the right, seemed to almost swallow his smile whole. His nose was flat, with no peak at the end going up and down. Starting at the bridge, all the way to his nostrils, was the same milky pale smoothness. It was unusual to come across a spacer without a crooked nose, even Lawson's nose tilted slightly to the left, yet Charlie's seemed to have been spared.

As Charlie continued working away at the blue coloured screen, she gazed around the apartment. It was sparsely furnished, with two beds in the center of the room, as well as two chairs, a small table and a cooking area. Simple enough, but with enough for two people who frequently traveled. Like Charlie, she thought, Lawson traveled light. Both of Charlie and Lawson's combined belongings could be fit into the same storage locker. It seemed their home base was set up in a similar style. The only thing that seemed out of place was a plain looking holocron sitting on the table between the two beds, she was tempted to open it and see what it was that Charlie and Lawson had taken it upon themselves to record, but she doesn't, because it's not hers.

"So...What are you actually doing?" Mattie asked casually, leaning back on Charlie's (She assumed it was Charlies', given that it was on the left and Charlie's pet peeve about the Hawk was that the assigned boys dorm had the beds on the right) bed.

"I'm canceling all our jobs."  
"Why?"  
"Well if we're out doing noble things and saving the Galaxy then we really don't have time to smuggle spice to Onderon."

"Who do you smuggle spice from?"  
"Whoever asks us to."

"Right." She said, after a moment. "So...Do you have a lot of jobs lined up?" Charlie shrugged idly, the red arms of his coat of choice are bathed in a blue light. She recalls Lawson wearing the same coat not so long ago. She turns to look up at the roof for a few moments, trying to draw on something and continue the conversation.

"Do you like being a smuggler?"  
"No." Charlie replies, "I'd have preferred to be a scout, see unknown words, go to new heights..." Mattie stifles a small laugh. He truly was a spacers son. You didn't hear things like that on Corusant.

"Why didn't you?" Charlie hesitates, before responding with

"Working for Lawson paid better, and I already had a job with him."  
"You mean to tell me you had no affection at all for the man who raised you?" Charlie scoffs, and walks over to her, and sat on the bed.  
"You're a nosy woman aren't you?"  
"Certainly." She replied. Charlie collected the holocron, and opened it for her to see. The blue image reveals a small child running into the arms of an older man who holds him close.

"Lawson recorded this for me so that I would have some memento of my childhood as an adult." He said, "I love Lawson." He said, watching the tiny blue child over and over again in a loop. "He's my best friend, and I would do almost anything he asked of me, don't misunderstand, but I'm here because this is the life I chose."

"I know." She said, after a tiny pause, long enough for Charlie to put he holochron into his jacket pocket.  
"Did you chose your life?"  
"Me?"  
"You." She pauses.

"No, well….Maybe."  
"Maybe?" He asks, sounding slightly curious.

"Well, during the Mandalorian wars...When there was no one to train me, it was either become a historian or leave the order." She admitted, "And I wanted to be a Jedi so badly that I accepted a temporary place as a junior historian." She sighed, "And then of course there was the ordeal with Revan during the Civil War and of course by then I was too old." She murmured, "So when the temple closed, I realized someone had to preserve the teachings of the Jedi...So I started collecting holocrons. Which is how you met me."

"That's my favorite story." Charlie said, jokingly, taking the hint from Mattie's reluctance that she didn't want to talk about this anymore.  
"It would be." She grumbled, before hitting him lightly on the back.

"I thought it was funny." He smiled.

"You were dead, you know. For a whole minute, you were dead."  
"Yeah, but 'coming to life' and scaring you was funny." Mattie let out a tiny huff and tried not to let the memory of what she had thought was a corpse, way back on Perargus, coming to life and scaring the living daylights out of her affect her too much. Charlie glanced back at her, and then looked down to his boots, for a moment, she almost though he could repent his previous actions, but he spoils it by saying  
"Of course, if you had a healing implant-" She smacked him with a pillow.

"Will you shut up about the healing implant? Freaks me out." Mattie complained. Charlie's reply was to scoff at her.

"I like it."  
"I know you like it you never shut up about it!" She exclaimed, as Charlie stood up again, and offered her his hand.  
"How about I take you to the local watering hole?" He offers casually.

"Are you asking me out on a date?" She asked, lightly. Charlie scoffed.  
"Jedi don't date. Consider it thanks."

"For what?"  
"Coming with me, I know you didn't have too." Mattie accepts his hand after a moment, and follows him towards the turbo lift.

…

The 'local watering hole' as Charlie called it, was as equally run down and dirty as the rest of this part of the moon. In all the time he'd lived on this miserable planet, Charlie doesn't remember anything looking new for very long. But he supposes that's on the normal side for him, because he doesn't remember owning anything new other then really his shoes in at least the last five years. Most of his clothes were Lawson's old hand-me-downs or second hand, so he fit right in with the crowd that inhabited a place like this.

Mattie on the other hand did not. Even in her 'rebel gear' she was still nothing like any of the other partons they saw as they approached. Th door guard stops him.

"Charlie! Didn't think you'd be dating anyone."  
"She's not my date, Hy'aan." He scoffed, "She's just a friend." The man opened the door so they could enter.

"Friendly with them here are we?" Mattie asked softly as she followed him into the bar. Charlie smiled slightly and led her to a table a bit away from the action.

'A bit. Lawson's been bringing me here since I was fifteen and he's been guarding the door for as long as I can recall." Charlie commented, ordering two drinks from the waiter. He turned back to find Mattie starring out of the transparent viewing frame out into space.

"You know, for such an awful planet, it does actually have a pretty nice view." Charlie nodded in agreement and followed her eyeline out to the twinkling stars of Nal Hutta. As a child, he'd often been fascinated by the stars of his perceived home planet, and to the stars that he and Lawson saw as they entered and exited hyperspace.

"So you grew up here?" Mattie asked, as Charlie ordered drinks for the two of them. Charlie nods.  
"I did, when Lawson and I weren't in the process of smuggling yes."  
"So you know the planet?"  
"The poorer parts, yes. Spacer scum like me ain't welcome in the higher class parts." He scoffed. "But yes, I am familiar with the poor sectors." He continued, "I know the refugee section better then most, the apartments, all that." Mattie sighed softly, and accepted her drink from the man who brought them out. "Well, now you owe me a story." Charlie said, after taking a sip from his drink.

"Do I?" Mattie asked. Charlie smiled his smile again and nodded. .

While she apparently tried to think of one, Charlie took her face in. She had a pretty face (Not as though he really had much to compare her to) Her face was a mix between oval and heart shaped, but in a good way. Unlike his own admittedly rather flat face, Mattie's was rounded out and even. She looked like an ad for facial symmetry. Even her lips, where are medium sized and fit just right in her face, have equal sized perks on her top lip.

The whole effect of having perfect symmetry is ruined however by her hair being parted on the left, rather then down the center. He is of the impression that parting it on the side was in fashion, currently, and Mattie, desperate not to draw attention to herself, stays up to date with fashion while he and Lawson have been dressing and grooming the same since before the end of the war.

Returning his eyes to her face now, he takes note of her nose, which is slightly larger then his own, and slightly hooked at the end rather then pert like the noses hes often seen people view as favorable. But tends are meaningless to Charlie, and Mattie has never mentioned it so he has never noticed it. But he quickly decides that if he had to pick a favorite part of her face then it would certainly be her nose, followed by her eyes.

While not an eye piercing colour like his own or Lawsons's grey orbs, they were green, the clear sort of green found in rock pools near oceans, and filled with an unfamiliar warmth, like the sun shining into water and giving a view to its indeterminable depths. He is not used to warm eyes, and finds then a pleasant change.

"Are you going to stare at me all day or are you going to listen to my story?" Mattie asked, softly, spooking him. After clearing his throat, Charlie attempted to casually take a sip of his drink and look back at her, clearly trying to sooth his wounded pride.  
"Uh. Yes." He says, after a moment. Mattie laughs softly at him, and then begins her tale.

"I grew up in the rich part of Courusant." She begins. Charlie didn't need her to tell him that. She looked it. Rolling orange and milk skin and soft hands told him that she came from money but he doesn't interrupt. "My father was a politician who was for the Mandalorian wars." She said, as if it had happened to her a lifetime ago.

"And it meant nothing to me, at first, given that I was only six." She said, in a soft voice. "But when the war really started, my mother noticed I was force sensitive." She murmured. "I picked up a spoon and threw it at her because I didn't want to eat Cicila beans.' Charlie laughs softly into his drink, and lowers the mug. "Then they shipped me off to the academy." She murmured. "I always really hated them for that." She confided. "They were supposed to love me and raise me and they just handed me off." She uses a hand gesture to prevent Charlie from adding his two cents and continues. "After I arrived, there was only one master capable of taking on an apprentice, I was supposed to be a Senital." She confided, "But I was trained as a consular for some months, before she left for the wars too."

There is a pause in the story as Mattie takes a sip of the sweet slightly tangy drink Charlie ordered for her. She doesn't remember what he called it but she quite liked it. Most of the women in the building were drinking the same thing, while Charlie has a slightly smaller mug filled with an ominous red drink. She continues her story. "And then, by the time the war ended, I was too old to be trained as a real Jedi." She grumbled, "So they decided that my mission should be collecting holochrons." A brief pause, "I missed the mass execution on Katarr because I was hunting rumors on Alderann."

Charlie knew the story of Katarr, Darth spooky-death mask (He can never remember his real name, but it sounds like nihilistic) destroyed a whole world where the Jedi had gathered to discuss the future. A gaping wound in the force that hungered to be filled. Or some Jedi crap like that.  
"And I assume after that, at some point, you ended up with us on an awful little mining planet." Mattie nods.

"Something like that." Charlie drains the last of his drink, and indicates he would like a second. Mattie is only half done with hers, he notices. "You like it?" He asked, "Because I can get you something else if you don't."

"No, no. It's fine. What is it?"  
"Juma Juice mixed with Alderanian tonic water."  
"Oh."

"Yeah it's not going to get you drunk if that's what's worrying you." Charlie said, accepting his second red drink from the blue waitress.  
"Tell me. Do you really think I'm pretty?" Pause, and then  
"I guess so."  
"You guess so?"  
"For a living I tote freight and contraband to outer rim planets, where women are either barred from or usually to smart to bother with breaking the law." She kicks him under the table and he exaggerates his wince.  
"I thought you were the exotic, mysterious not quite human who had had a dozen liaisons with women and men of all species?"

"You thought quite wrong." He replied, "I've been toting freight with Lawson for twenty years and I've had exactly six liaisons. Only one of those ended up being more then one long night."

"And?"

"Turns out he actually wanted to steal our ship and thought the best way to do that was through me."

"So you're not….Attracted to the feminine form?" A slight quirk in his upper lip from bemusement.

"No, I never said that. Out of my as you called them, 'liaisons' three were women and two were men."

"I thought you said you had six?"  
"One was not a humanoid."

"Did you have sex with an Ithorian?"

"What? No! Gods, no!" Charlie exclaimed, sounding vaguely offended.  
"A robot?" Charlie looks scandalized and takes a long sip of his drink. He cannot imagine anything worse.

"No."  
"Who?"

"I don't have to tell you." Charlie responded, and poked his tongue out at her in a very mature way, sounding quite smug and pleased with himself. Mattie rolled her eyes in a gesture that Charlie interpreted as affectionate. "What about you then? Had any romantic liaisons yourself?"

"Of course not. The Jedi strictly forbid any romantic attachments."

"Well you don't need a romantic attachment to go to a bar get drunk and have the time of your life with a mysterious older man." Mattie scoffs and sips her drink carefully.

"It's banned."  
"Damn. Being a Jedi must suck."

"It has its drawbacks." She admitted. "Tell me, if you hate the Jedi so much, why are you working with them?" Charlie takes a long, thoughtful sip of his drink, clearly considering his next answer.

"Well. I trust Lawson's judgement."

"Really?"  
"Well, I wanted to give Blake to the Exchange, and drop you and Mrs Beazley off on the next habitable planet, so Lawson and I could retire rich men. He said that was the wrong thing to do."

"You don't sound convinced." Mattie pointed out. Charlie shrugged, and took his mug into both his hands, it is a very childish gesture of comfort.

"I think Lawson feels bad. I think, that he blames himself for how I turned out."  
"How you turned out?"  
"A smuggler, someone who makes a living breaking the law. He wants to clear some metaphorical red from his ledger or something equally as stupid." Mattie scoffs and drains the last of her drink, declining a second. "What abut you?"  
"I would give my left hand to be a Jedi."

For a second, Charlie feels an unbearable sadness that he can't quite place. The idea that Mattie still wants to be a Jedi despite everything hurts him. But he doesn't vocalise it. He drains the last of his drink and gets to his feet.

"Lets get back to the ship. I'm sure Blake is wondering where you are." Mattie frowns slightly, and accepts his offered arm as they walk to the counter. Charlie pays for their drinks with credits obtained from his many pockets, and they leave.

Mattie wonders what it is she said.

A/N: Whelp. It's the last week until s4. Im so pumped. Im also doing double fic because I wont be around for the next 4 days at all. Sad, right? Anyway. Leave a review if you like the fic, I really like this AU, hopeful Ill do something with different characters next time, lol.


End file.
